About Technical Reports

Technical reports are reports from academic departments, government agencies and corporations that describe projects, research and activities of the organization. Technical reports are sometimes called "gray literature" because they occupy a gray area between books and journal articles, and they are distributed by the organization, not by conventional publishers.

Academic Technical Reports: produced by academic departments and research institutes. Academic technical reports are usually available on the Website of the department that published the report.

U.S. Government Technical Reports: Report on projects that received federal funding. Nowadays there are are several U.S. Government technical report servers that may be useful, depending on your research topic. The Marriott Library has millions of historic government technical reports on uncatalogued microfiche. If you need to find an old government report, ask the Subject Specialists for assistance.

Corporate Technical Reports: produced by corporate R&D. Corporate technical reports are usually on the website of the organization.